


The Winchesters: the Medieval AU

by Brosedshield



Series: The Great LJ Backup of 2018 [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Bible, Bible Quotes, Big Brothers, Brothers, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Knights - Freeform, Literacy, Medieval Priesthood, POV Dean Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 08:43:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16889310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brosedshield/pseuds/Brosedshield
Summary: Three stories (imported as part of the Great LJ Backup of 2018) featuring a Medieval SPN AU with Sir Dean Winchester and his brother Sam Winchester being sweet and watching out for each other. Featuring:Sir Dean vs the GriffinConfessionsWords in the Dark





	1. Sir Dean vs the Griffin

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Great LJ Backup of 2018.
> 
> I originally wrote this for the prompt: "Dean v. some kind of big time old magic beast, a giant or a basilisk or a griffin or some such...Mirror: Oh, hey, he's actually a medieval knight" at: https://i-speak-tongue.livejournal.com/48170.html. Beta'd originally by Lavinia Lavender, all errors are mine...
> 
> Podfic available (theoretically? I haven't tested recently) from the fantastic Alice Alaizabel [here](https://alice-alaizabel.livejournal.com/8233.html).

By the sixth time Sir Dean Winchester, eldest son of Lord John of Lawrence, slams his sword through the monster’s skin, he starts to think that maybe he should have taken his smartass little brother’s advice.

(“It’s a male Alps griffin, Dean. You’d be better off just taking bronze.”

“Sam, this sweet blade is triple-forged Spanish steel. I’m pretty sure it can get the job done.”

“I still think you should bring that knife. You know the bronze one that Mom—“

“God’s teeth, Father Sammy, you just let me worry about the monsters, okay?”)

Sam’s just fourteen, and, as second son, destined for the priesthood. Personally, Dean thinks Father just wants him out of the castle, somewhere he won’t be quite so much of a pain in the ass. Sam can read and write in Latin _and_ Greek, speak four or five languages—Dean’s lost count—and Dean can still get under his skin about girls, or monsters, or how _short_ and _skinny_ he is. Sam complains that he likes girls too much to be a priest. Father says that’s not actually an issue. Then they fight—about things from personal hygiene to theology—until Dean can’t take the sound of them screaming at each other and he goes out hunting.

(“Does killing things make it better, Dean? Is that how you block out all the _merde_ he says about Mom and God and the Devil—"

“No, Sam. But it makes me happy.”)

Dean blocks a massive claw going straight for his head, ducks a wing, and gets taken down by a bloody _tail_. He scrabbles across the the ground, using hunks of feathers on the griffin's body to pull himself upright again. Thank God he’s in chain and not plate, or he’d never get up. He's glad he left Impala, his gorgeous Arabian stallion, tied several clearings back. He planned on sneaking up on the griffin—ha, what a joke—but now he's just glad he didn't have to watch his horse get gutted. This feathery bastard is _fast_.

You never know, any second now Sam might be the eldest son and won’t have to go to seminary. That would make his day, until he and Father start going at each other again. If Dean were a betting man—and, you know, not _dead_ —he’d put his money on patricide. Sam’s just too smart.

The griffin's beak misses him by inches, and one claw rakes his arm hard enough to send a vibration all the way up to his hand, loosen his fingers just enough for the blade to slip out.

Dean backpedals, but the beast’s not stupid and presses the advantage.

There are a lot of things that Dean wishes he could have said. He just hopes that his brother read them on his face and in his daily teasing the way Sam can look in a book and makes sense out of all those mysterious squiggles.

The griffin goes for his throat, and Dean reaches for his last weapon when an arrow zips between them and lodges itself in the monster’s chest.

Dean thinks it's kind of unfair that the griffin's been taking a yard of sharpened steel to the abdomen more than once and shown no reaction, but when the arrow hits, it jerks back like at last something hurts.

Then a second and third arrow bury themselves in the creature’s skin, and he looks over and, sure enough, there’s Sammy, face set, sending bolt after bolt into the griffin's vitals organs.

It’s good, it’s the distraction that Dean desperately needed, but it’s not enough to bring it down. The griffin's too big.

So Dean pulls the bronze knife—with Mother’s family crest etched into the handle—and charges back in.

It’s easier this time, when the half-bird, half-lion actually reacts to the pain. When—after slitting its throat—it actually bleeds, shudders, and dies.

When they both know it’s dead, Sam comes down from his vantage point to stand beside him and look down at the beast.

Dean is sweaty, breathing heavy, and exhausted because, you know, he just spent about half an hour just barely not getting eaten by a griffin. Sam is almost gasping, he knows, not because he gets that tired using a bow—unfair that a shrimp as smart as his brother is good at _everything_ else too—but because he hasn’t seen that many fights, hasn’t watched people he loves get killed, at least not as much as Dean.

“Bronze arrow heads,” Dean says. It’s almost a question.

“Mom’s,” Sam answers. He swallows. “Don’t tell—“

“I won’t. Though we should dig them out. Put them back.” Dean hesitates—God’s blood, he’s covered in gore—but eventually wraps his arm over Sam’s shoulders, and tugs his brother close.

Sam’s shaking, but he leans his head against Dean’s shoulder.

There are a lot of things that Dean wished he could have said, before when he was dying. Maybe he shouldn’t leave them all to chance. “I’m proud of you, Sam,” he says. “Always am.”

“I knew that.” Sam looks up and smiles. “But it’s good to hear.”


	2. Confessions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean keep each other's secrets.

Dean, as a knight and heir to all of Lawrence, has never much worried about the privacy and possessions of others. This is especially true when it comes to his little brother. If it’s Sam’s, it’s Dean’s. Just like Dean would give Sam anything he had.

Of course, he can be a pain in the ass about it too, because where’s the fun in being oldest otherwise?

Dean burst through Sam’s door and raises his arms to the heavens dramatically, ignoring Sam’s lighting fast—though not quite fast enough—move to stuff his current book under his pillow.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned!” Dean crows. “God’s earhairs, Sam, you will not believe how I have sinned. _Two girls_!”

Sam rolls his eyes and flops down on the bed, carefully still on top of the book. Sam will spot Dean his shirts (that don’t fit) and his weaponry (that is never quite balanced for Dean’s hand; they have different styles) but he gets downright rabid about his books. “Dean, I don’t need to hear about your amorous exploits.”

Dean tumbles down beside him. “Oooo, big words, Father Winchester. Does that mean conqueror of women? King of seduction? Master of the hard—?”

Sam hits him. “Great deeds in love, you ignoramus.”

“And indeed they were, Sam,” Dean says. “This first one, Celia, she said, ‘How about you and me talk over by the hay bales’, so _I said_ —“

“I really don’t need to hear this, Dean.”

“Sure you do!” Dean punches him—lightly—in the arm. He’s not quite sure what’s up with his brother. When Dean was fourteen he’d already been making eyes at _every_ new chambermaid—and doing more that that when they’d let him. Sam’s interested, but not active, and Dean sees it as his duty to help (and shamelessly tease) Sam at every opportunity. “You’ve got to save up these experiences, Sammy, even _vicariously_.” Dean does listen when Sam talks, and he’s stored up a lot more fancy words that he’ll ever admit “for when you take your vows.”

Dean takes a breath and waits for Sam’s burst of outrage so that he can keep talking over the top of him like a proper pain-in-the-ass older brother. Sam’s been complaining and fighting Father about going to seminary for as long as he’s been able to talk. Sam says he doesn’t have a calling and that he likes girls too much. Father says that Sam’s a second son and he’ll do whatever the hell the Lawrence estate can pay for and be grateful for it. The argument tends to go downhill from there. Once, memorably, Sam threatened to run away to beg on the streets, and Lord John threatened to throw him in the stocks if he tried.

So Sam is understandably twitchy any time anyone mentions the priesthood. But this time he doesn’t say anything at all, and Dean, expecting resistance, trips over his own thoughts when it’s just…gone.

“Sam?” he says.

Sam has his legs pulled up to his chest and won’t look at him. “I’m going,” he answers, almost too softly to hear.

Dean’s world shivers a little bit, like Jericho right before the walls came down. He’s always been there for Sam, and Sam has always _been_ there, and he thought…

“But you’re always fighting about it,” Dean says. “You’re practically at his throat every day.” He notes the fresh bruise around Sam’s left eye—Father’s got a strong right—and wonders if something worse happened than the usual knocks on both sides. They usually just shout at each other but sometimes they both loose their temper and then they _brawl_ like drunks. Except Dean can’t stop them by knocking their heads together and throwing them in gaol, because Father wouldn’t go and Sam wouldn’t stop. But now, Sam hasn’t gotten up, hasn’t put any weight on his legs, oh God, what if…

“Used to be. Used to hate the idea. But now…” Sam puts his hands over his face. “I just want to get away, Dean. Somewhere with books and thought and people who…”

Dean doesn’t want to know how that sentence ends. _People who read. People who understand me. People I don’t hate_.

Sam’s too smart for Lawrence. Anyone who can read and write Latin (and Greek, and that funny northern language) and speak five languages shouldn’t be stuck in a place where the only use Sam gets out of his brains is teaching Dean words he pretends not to remember, and never using the same insult twice when he’s blaspheming Father’s name, personal habits, and ancestry.

Dean swallows, and then puts on his best smile. “That’s great, Sam,” he says. “You’ll have a great time, you know, reading stuff.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Don’t tell Father?”

“Isn’t this what he wants?” Dean ask, but even as the words leave his mouth he knows what Sam means. He’s getting a horrible feeling.

“Yes, but if it’s what _I_ want, he’ll change his mind,” Sam says.

“You fought,” Dean says. “What did you do?”

Sam hunches farther over his knees and almost stops his eyes from flickering to his book-hiding spot. But not quite.

Dean mimes grabbing Sam by the hair and Sam jerks back—he hasn’t been slow enough to catch for _years_ —and Dean sneaks the book out from under the blanket while his brother is distracted.

Sam’s not an idiot, he noticed right away. “Give that back!” He tries to slug his brother in the face, and Dean is glad he blocked when the punch carries a lot more force than expected.

Dean flips the book open one-handed and holds Sam off with the other. He still has several inches and a stone or two of extra muscle, though the way Sam’s growing that might not last that long.

“Let me see, what may I divine from this text?” Dean does his best imitation of their first tutor, the one that convinced him Latin was full of shit. The stuffed-shirt had made everyone miserable until Sam poisoned him—to this day he claims the mushroom soup was an honest mistake—and the tutor ran back to Arcansau. Dean squints dramatically at the unintelligible squiggles and the stylized pictures of monsters. “I see great things in store for you, young Father Winchester. Heaps and heaps of Latin homework and—what the _hell_ , Sam?” Dean has just seen the first page, and he doesn’t need to understand the little squiggles when he sees the Campbell family crest on the front page. “This is one of Mother’s books!”

Sam is so angry he’s shaking. He jumps for the book again, and almost pushes Dean over. Dean pushes back, maybe harder than he wanted to, and Sam thumps into the headboard of the bed. “Give it back,” Sam snaps, but his eyes are wet, almost crying he’s so angry.

Dean closes the book carefully and weighs it in his hand. “Sam, this is from the forbidden library.”

“Not like he ever checks.”

“Sam, Father would—“

“Please don’t burn it.”

There Sam goes again, speaking so quietly Dean almost doesn’t hear. But when he does, he stares. “Why would I do that?”

“You do what Father says, Dean. And that’s what he told me, today, that he was going to burn her library because the knowledge in it was from the Devil.”

Dean doesn’t read, but the idea is almost as horrifying to him as it clearly is for Sam. How horrible, to send up that much knowledge, history and art, practically someone’s soul up, like it was just another monster to be burned.

Dean hands the book—years, if not decades of transcription and illustration, carefully wrought to convey information down the ages—back to Sam. It’s like how he teaches things to Sam, how Father shows him how to hunt or be a good liege, except books aren’t just about family and the community that you’re living in. Each book is like someone miles and miles away whispering in your ear, sharing the things that they thought mattered enough to write down in the mysterious, complex scratches that make up words. People caring enough to write, copy, illustrate, and bind books is the closest analogy Dean has ever found for the love Sam talks about when he reads the New Testament. Here’s someone Dean has never met, and will never know, caring so deeply about something —and about the stranger that will read the book eventually—to devote a lifetime to painstakingly copy every word.

Sam smooths a hand over the leather cover and then hides the book somewhere Dean doesn’t pay attention to. He’s sullen, face red from the slowly subsiding anger, and he won’t look Dean in the eye. Sam’s hooked into that universal connection, that tenuous link of human thought and reflection, but every day all he really has is Father and Dean, two idiots good at nothing but killing things. No wonder he feels trapped. No wonder he fights.

“What’s it about?” Dean asks.

“It’s one of the bestiaries,” Sam says. “The one that had the griffin in it.”

“That’s useful.”

“Yeah.”

“I won’t let him burn her books, Sam.”

“Yes, you will, Dean.”

“What!” Dean rears back. “Sammy, I said I wouldn’t, so why would you say I would?”

“You do what he says,” Sam whispers, rubbing his eyes. “Always have, always will. Just…don’t tell him, okay? For me?”

Dean says nothing because it’s mostly true. He has almost always done what Father said. But he finds it vaguely insulting that Sam doesn’t think he could change for him. And of course he won’t tell. Telling on his baby brother stopped being fun the first time Lord John gave his second son a black eye for talking back—and the first time Dean threatened to break his skull if he hurt Sam.

“You put the love of God into them at priest-school, Sammy,” Dean says. “You knock the sin straight out of them.”

“It’s never worked on you.” Sam grins.

Dean spreads his hands. “Think how _licentious_ I’ll be when you’re not here, Father Winchester. Hey, I might get up to _three_ girls!”

Sam punches him, Dean pins Sam down and tickles him—because nothing can be so embarrassing when you’re fourteen—and by the time they go down to dinner, they’re okay again.

_“I’d do anything for you, Sammy.”_

_“Even tell Father to sodomize a hedgehog?”_

_Dean knows what the first word means, and he can guess that the second isn’t pretty. “Yeah.”_

_Sam thinks about that. “Even stop calling me ‘Father Winchester’?”_

_“Well, maybe not.”_

Which is good, because at dinner, Father is drunk, and he announces that his son Samuel will be leaving for the monastery at Stanford-upon-Avon with the spring thaws.

Dean knows that Sam will be okay. And he knows that someday, he’ll tell Lord John where to shove it. But until he finds the right moment, he will keep both confessions to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Podfic form the fantastic Alice Alaizabel originally available [here](https://alice-alaizabel.livejournal.com/8522.html). Haven't checked the link!


	3. Words in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam reads every night in the chapel. It was Dean’s idea.

Dean’s still proud—maybe just a  _little_  smug—that it was his idea. Not for Sam to read the Bible (Dean’s fairly sure that his little brother reads the Bible every night in his room, curling so close to the candle flame that one day he’ll light his hair on fire) but that Dean started him reading aloud in the chapel.  
  
The first time, of course, Sam whined like a little girl.  
  
 _“Dean, I can just read to you in here.” Sam waved around his tiny room. “Or your room. Or the library. But the lighting is atrocious in the chapel this time of day.”  
  
“Awwww, Sammy.” Dean could whine pretty well himself. Though of course he’s the oldest, so it’s called wheedling and he always wins. “It sounds better in the chapel. Come on, Sam.”  
  
Sam glared, but Dean waited, smirking at him. He doesn’t know what his face looks like when he’s coaxing—the expression doesn’t work on other people nearly as well as Sam’s puppy eyes—but it’s enough to sway his little brother.  
  
“Yeah, fine,” Sam said, grabbing his huge, worn Bible. There’s a bald spot on the spine where Father cut off the Campbell crest, but Sam repaired it as best he could, and the old leather cover always shines from his semi-maniacal polishing. He followed Dean down the castle halls, muttering under his breath the whole time._  
  
But Dean is—and was—right, it sounds better. That first time the sound of Sam’s voice—young but powerful, high like an angel’s—moved through the mostly dark chapel like a force, like the Word itself rolling out of the book, through Sam, and into the dark.  
  
Sam translates as he goes, turning the Latin of the text—beautiful, but pointless as far as Dean’s concerned—into something they both can understand. They take care of each other, Dean and Sam, covering each other’s weaknesses, holding each other up. Dean would die in battle—or sickness, fighting Father, in fire, water, wind or earth—for his brother, and Sam will read to him in the dark and fill the stories with sense and meaning. Dean would give Sam the world, and Sam gives his to Dean every night, his ink-stained fingers following the text, his lips speaking for the one person, the brother who has always taken care of him.   
  
Dean can’t think of the Bible or church without thinking of his brother. He can’t think of David lamenting the punishment of his people without hearing Sam’s voice, rough from the cold he one had that made him rasp over the words; or Jeremiah wailing at God without hearing the first time Sam’s voice broke, stumbling over the recitation.  _Why did I come forth from the womb to see sorrow and pain?_  
  
Dean knows why. It’s because Sam is his baby brother. He needs him. There need be no other reason beneath the heavens or upon the earth.  
  
He makes Sam skip the boring parts, too.  
  
 _“You said that part already, with the bird.”  
  
“No, I didn’t. This is a different holocaust. This one is for—“  
  
“No, I’m sure you said it already, Sammy. You repeated the bit about the washing and going to the priest and the bird and—“  
  
“_Merde _, Dean! I. Am. Not. Repeating!”  
  
“I mean, I know it’s Latin and it’s hard to read and all, but still if you keep losing your place like that…”  
  
“I’m not—fine! Just fine.” Sam flipped pages angrily. Dean wasn’t sure how he managed to convey so much irritation and never hurt the vellum. It was a smart-ass skill, he thought. “I’m going to Kings. Happy?”  
  
Dean smiled, innocently, like he was really a big dumb knight who couldn’t tell Deuteronomy from Genesis. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sammy, I just didn’t want you repeating yourself.”  
_  
The first time in the chapel, it was just them. Sam bitched, of course, and read with a certain relish how Cain took out Abel and then some lines from Proverbs about respecting brothers—though Dean’s still not sure if he made those up or not. But Sam ended with Saint Paul— _love is patient, love is kind_ —and Dean knew Sam understood.  
  
Next time, Dean spread the word.  
  
Four of the serving girls—grey-haired women, really, mothers of children Sam’s age—came that first week.  
  
 _“Sam reads in the chapel,” Dean said at a dinner, while Maggie—she let him kiss her once, when he was young and foolish—poured him ale. “Anyone can come,” he told her. “Won’t bother me. Or Sam.”  
  
He wasn’t sure anyone would. But they came, stepping cautiously through the chapel door Dean had left ajar. Sam didn’t even notice his audience until the end of Luke when he looked up and saw the four servants patting their eyes and glancing at one another.  
  
“Ummm,” he said, eyes huge. “Dean?”  
  
“Yeah, Sammy?”  
  
Sam nodded at the servants. They gave him smiles and nervous curtsies and began shuffling out of the chapel.  
  
Dean threw an arm over Sam’s shoulders. “Just wanted to listen to the stories, Sam.”  
  
“But Dean, I’m not—“  
  
“You’re just telling the stories. Like you tell them to me.”  
  
“If Father finds out—“  
  
“Just don’t read the end, and Father won’t care.”_  
  
So Sam reads every evening in the chapel, and most nights the pews are full, or almost full of people: servants, townies, peasants. Never nobles, never  _Father_. The stuffed-shirt gentry (such as they are in Lawrence) wouldn’t have cared, and Dean doesn’t tell them. Sam is their secret, his and the castle’s and the town’s, and you don’t give your secrets away to Lord John or strangers.  
  
Dean knows the whole Bible in Sam’s voice, each story illustrated by candlelight flickering the chapel murals and his brother’s face. Sometimes Dean can find the stories on the painted walls—Abraham with his knife raised over Isaac; Mary (not his mother) before a cross—but the images are just dried paint and gold leaf, and his brother’s voice is fire and shadows, yearning and fear, wisdom, youth and passion.  
  
The only book Dean doesn’t know is Revelation, because Lord John will not have it read in his estate. The Devil’s in it, he says.  
 _  
“Don’t you teach my son about that book,” he said to the tutor, chalice full of something stronger than wine. “Horsemen and angels and monsters and women brighter than the sun…the chosen and the damned….I’ll have you pilloried.”  
  
“It’s the Bible,” the tutor replied, scowling.  
  
“The Devil’s in it,” Lord John replied. “and you will not put the Devil in my son.” He drank. “There’s enough there already.”  
_  
This is the last night Sam will read in the chapel before he leaves for seminary. Dean sits in the middle of the worn, wooden pews and watches how the candles cast shadows on sixteen-year-old Sam’s face, notes each time a servant or a peasant enters. The people of Lawrence have come, in their own way, to bid Lord John’s second son goodbye.  
  
Dean half expects Sam to choose something about fathers and sons. The prodigal returns, or Jacob mourning the loss of Joseph. Maybe the crucifixion—no subtle symbolism there, but then Sam has always been big on drama—or Jeremiah, spewing rage, revenge, and despair into the darkness. When Sam reads from any of the long-dead, much reviled prophets Dean can hear the little brother he loves raging against Father and Fate and everything that shapes him unwillingly. Some days, Dean comes close to hating his father, because Lord John has never understood that Sam is angry, but not  _just_  at him.  
  
But Sam doesn’t read anything Dean expects. Instead, he turns to the middle of the first chapter of Luke. No angry fathers struck dumb because they have low expectations, no angelic ass-kicking. This is Elizabeth getting knocked-up when she thought she could never have a baby. This is about Mary giving her acceptance to Fate, saying yes to God and what will be. Mary visits her cousin, follows the husband she’s never slept with to a strange city, and she looks only ahead, never back.  
  
Sam is still angry. Dean knows this because he is Sam’s big brother and he knows everything about him—including the what and the where with that really cute dairy maid six months ago. Sam reads into the silent, crowded chapel and the candles dance and the mural behind him almost seem to move. His voice is calm and strong, and Dean is proud all over again, proud that Sam is here, that Dean is with him, and proud of his little brother who is so smart and still Dean’s.  
  
Sam reads the stories to the dark, and everyone knows that the second-born Winchester is saying goodbye. Only Dean knows he is also saying _I accept, let it be done._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alice Alaizabel did a wonderful podfic for this. Last I knew it was available [here](https://alice-alaizabel.livejournal.com/9412.html).
> 
> Also, All Bible verses (yeah, all two :P) from the St. Joseph Edition New American Bible. I was going to use a St. James I rustled up online, and then realized that “Faith, hope and charity” just doesn't have the same ring in my head.


End file.
